A dark fantasy that dabbles in all the evil wiles of religion and royalty while teetering our anti-heroine between several reckless and rash romances. Lore is special—and she knows it, but she doesn’t quite know the whole of it, and certainly not the why. All the mystery around her origins and the dark power she possesses keeps us reading, and the reveal near the end is kinda weird, but fits the stretched limits of this macabre tale. 

 

The setting is a fantasy take on pre-revolutionary Paris, including dirty Kings and twisted Cardinals and all the terror of the city’s skull-stocked catacombs—with characters who learned to speak English in 21st Century New York. 

 

It’s definitely unique, and apart from a personal dislike with several cartoonish voices in the audiobook narration (the pronunciation of August sounded like: ‘A-goosed’ —and if that didn’t cause a few misplaced giggles…), it was a fascinating read.